Caravan travel guides

Will we soon give satnav devices the boot?

Wandering around while staring at a map on a smartphone screen could soon be a thing of the past — we could all be staring at our shoes, instead.

London artist has Dominic Wilcox has designed a pair of shoes that have their own built-in GPS technology and while the route still needs to be uploaded from a computer, a series of LEDs on each shoe’s toe indicates distance and direction.

Wandering around while staring at a map on a smartphone screen could soon be a thing of the past — we could all be staring at our shoes, instead.

London artist has Dominic Wilcox has designed a pair of shoes that have their own built-in GPS technology and while the route still needs to be uploaded from a computer, a series of LEDs on each shoe’s toe indicates distance and direction.

Sadly (or perhaps fortunately), the shoes aren’t a serious attempt at improving navigation, but are a one-off prototype pair created as part of the “Global Footprint Project” — a campaign that’s promoting Northamptonshire's footwear industry.

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“I decided to make a pair of shoes that can navigate you to anywhere you wish to travel to. I thought about the Wizard of Oz and how Dorothy could click her shoes together to go home,” said Wilcox. “After uploading your required destination to the shoes via a piece of custom made mapping software and a USB cable, the GPS, which is embedded in the heel, is activated by a heel click. It then communicates to the wearer via a ring of LED lights to point in the required direction. The shoe with the GPS wirelessly communicates with the right shoe that has a progress bar of lights to show how close you are to the destination.”